


duet for three

by winterleaving



Series: trace these steps I used to know [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, but like sadly, check out how many music metaphors i can fit into this, does the tango, no one actually does the tango sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27448804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterleaving/pseuds/winterleaving
Summary: Nestled in the shadows, he suddenly feels a violent sense of wrongness, of unbelonging. But still, he wants to be a part of the swinging beat in front of him so hard it’s almost tangible.----Oh, how Sabo wishes for the past.
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy & Portgas D. Ace & Sabo
Series: trace these steps I used to know [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2005423
Comments: 22
Kudos: 26
Collections: We love Sabo with his memories





	duet for three

“Sabo!?”

Dammit. Who the hell recognized him just now? He tenses up ever so slightly in preparation for a fight - best to bring it out of the streets if whatever’s happening explodes into conflict. At least that way the number of civilian casualties might go down. His humming tapers off into a watchful quiet, and he bounces lightly on the balls of his feet, warming up. 

“Huh? Waddya just say, Luffy? _Sabo?_ ” Sabo frowns. What the fuck is a Luffy? More importantly, why is this pirate, presumably, saying his name like that? 

He sighs and fixes a winning smile onto his face before turning around, hands stuffed into his pockets to hide the fists already formed. “Well now, it seems you’ve caught me off guard!” He squares up, searching for the one who called him by his name. “You know my name, but I’m afraid I don’t know...yours?” 

_Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait._

“Huh!?”

“What the fuck? Is this some sort of sick joke?”

Standing there with the desert heat beating down on him, he finds himself trailing into a shocked silence. It hangs heavy in the air, and whatever else he might have said withers up on his tongue the moment he makes eye contact with the pirates gaping at him from across the street. Almost unconsciously, his hands uncurl.

“....Do I, do I know you?”

Suddenly uncertain, he tries again. 

He almost doesn’t recognize his voice, hesitant as it is, and something like ten odd years of loss slams into him with the force of a tsunami, leaving him breathless and wrongfooted. Suddenly, he feels like that stranded kid staring down the revolutionaries from behind Dragon’s back - he feels like a songbird trapped in a castle made of gilded stone, he feels like a little boy in a forest and it’s Ace and Luffy and Sabo and and and - “ _.....Ace?_ ” 

He’s stumbling forward, one step then two, and then he’s running and they’re sprinting towards him, and they meet right in the middle of the street, colliding and falling into the beginnings of a not quite right dance he didn’t even know he knew. They’re a tangle of limbs and yelling, and Sabo is clinging desperately onto these people he’s never met until today but has somehow known all his life. 

Someone starts to cry. It might be him. Oh _seas._ It’s definitely him. 

All of a sudden there’s nothing more he wants than to lie down on the ground and soak up their presence for the next _hour,_ but can’t stay for too long. Already, he can see Luffy starting to lag as the heat eats right through him, and out of the corner of his eyes he can see a crowd starting to gather, curious about the commotion. Somehow, they manage to gather themselves up and shuffle out of the way, and he blinks and finds himself neatly sequestered in a shady hole in the wall with two old pieces of his heart before him, and a mountain of food piling up.

It sounds like the start of a bad joke - three notorious criminals, two pirates and one revolutionary, walk into a bar. What happens next will shock you! They cram themselves into a corner, huddling around an empty table right where the lights start to dim and fade out in a flickering ostinato, and _oh,_ it hurts so much. Their knees are knocking into each other and there’s an elbow that looks to be jammed _very_ uncomfortably into Luffy’s ribcage, and overturned cups decorate the wood while the pile of plates grows steadily higher. He laughs a disbelieving sort of laugh - one that sounds almost like a sob. 

“Hey waiter! Bring me more meat!”

“You there! Get me a drink! Ohhhhh wait wait wait. Ya got any of those little _sake_ cups lying around?”

“ _Shishishishi!_ A toast! Sabo! What’re we toasting to!”

“...A toast? I-yeah. Yeah - a toast! To reunion!"

Alcohol sloshes over his sleeves, staining them. 

Across from him, Luffy is laughing and yelling as he flits in and out of Ace’s reach. In one smooth beat, the roles reverse and Ace is slinging his arm around him, shoving his grabby hands away from his plate. The tempo picks up, and Sabo’s breath catches. Winding and unwinding, they orbit each other without pause. He feels like he’s watching two stars competing. They seem to know instinctively where the other will be; always spinning and jumping and crashing in a dance that looks one step away from disaster. His heart is slamming against his ribcage, and watching them, he feels like he could cry. He’s so happy his chest might burst, he’s so happy it hurts - for the first time in a decade he can feel something stirring inside of him, waking up and singing with joy. 

He feels a rush of electricity, and Sabo wants to leap into the dance before the song ends - his hands and feet are restless, but something’s wrong. He hesitates. 

There’s ice creeping up the back of his neck, because Ace and Luffy look like two halves of a whole, not two thirds of a circle of three. Which is good! It’s good, because he doesn’t want to be what ended the song. He doesn’t want to be the finale; that they are alive and frankly dizzying in their vitality is proof that they did not die with him, that day. It’s proof of their strength. 

...But where does that leave him? Try as he might, he can’t find the openings in the circle, can’t slot himself into the steps that he once knew by the shape of his heart. It used to be as simple as breathing, but now he feels like he’s choking on nothing at all. 

_Do you remember,_ he wants to say, _do you remember the drums we ran to, in the woods?_

 _Do you remember,_ and it’s stuck in his throat, _that shitty violent overcompensating terpsichore we made up, as children? The rhythm that sounded like nothing but noise to everyone else?_

The fuck. As if either of them would know a word like terpsichore. 

~~_Hey. Do you remember me?_ ~~

...As if either of them would have forgotten. Of course, of course of _course_ they would remember. It was he who had forgotten, wasn’t it? He was the one who was dead for ten years, the one who ran away first and almost paid the price for it all. And seas, isn't that the most fucked up part of it all? That he died in all the ways that mattered - and that he picked himself up again, piece by piece, but was always a little off beat afterwards. The Sabo from after was a sad shell of the before, a little broken, a little cracked, and a little off rhythm - always trying to dance to a song he didn’t remember, trying to play all three parts at once and never realizing why. 

Well, now he knows. 

Nestled in the shadows, he suddenly feels a violent sense of wrongness, of unbelonging. But still, he wants to be a part of the swinging beat in front of him so hard it’s almost tangible.

“You damn piece of shit-”

“ _Shishishi!_ ” 

Around them, the noise grows steadily louder. The three of them are settled down now, as much as they can be, comfortable in the anonymity of crowded bars. Ace throws him a smile one part delirious happiness one part quiet disbelief, and Sabo’s breath stutters in his chest. 

_There!_ An opening - a brief lull in the conversation, a chance for Sabo to slot himself neatly into the song, to make it a number for three - it’s a ritenuto in trilling melody that Ace and Luffy spin to, with their voices for the song and their mad scramble for each other’s plates at the steps; quick and frantic and with their hearts on their sleeves. But just as quick as it comes it leaves, and before he knows it, the curtains rise again. 

The clamor is echoing behind his eyes. 

_An encore,_ they cry. _Again!_

And so again, the frantic beat starts to sing.

Dissatisfied, Sabo settles back down in his seat, feeling more untethered than ever.

Calm, he tells himself. Calm. 

But his heartbeat is reaching a crescendo in his ears, and Sabo feels he’s just about stopped breathing. Ace and Luffy are so _close_ , but so, so far out of his reach, still. Something sour is rising in his throat, but he washes it back down with cheap alcohol.

Fuck. They’re barely an arm’s length away, but the distance between across the crooked table surface spans a decade and then some. Sabo’s laughing and saying something in response, but damn if he doesn’t feel like he's about to go tumbling headfirst over his feet with every word that slips past him. He’s staring into his watery reflection like it might somehow hold the answer to all his problems. It definitely doesn’t, but he’ll take shit alcohol as his partner over new-old fears, just this once. 

(Just this once.)

It’s the shape and volume of a vow of brotherhood, of better times ahead, but try as he might, he feels like a stranger wearing his own skin. What’s changed? Something different. Is it the tempo? The composition, the meter? Did Ace and Luffy modify the song to fit the shape of a two person number? He can feel himself start to frantically think, reaching for answers to justify the gap between them only he seems to feel, and it hits him with all the force of a tsunami. 

Maybe, he realizes, swallowing, it might’ve simply become a different dance entirely - one where he’s an outsider looking in. Maybe, they’ve moved on and left him in the past. ~~Or was it he who moved one first, warping into someone unrecognizable?~~ It’s a bitter feeling, to be the audience and not the performer. He swallows back a sob - that his brothers are alive will be enough. It has to be. 

But it hurts all the same, realizing that it's Ace and Luffy, and then Sabo. 

Inhale. Exhale. 

He knocks back his drink and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> wahoo i wrote this with no other plan outside of It's Time To Dunk On Sabo hope you enjoyed


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